This Restaurant Menu Had the Best Content Marketing I’ve Seen

July 25, 2016

by Josh Anderson

In between stops during the interns’ two-day excursion to the Sundog Minneapolis office, we grabbed lunch at a place called Rock Bottom. In addition to some incredibly tasty shrimp, the restaurant menu boasted one of the most genius pieces of content marketing that I’ve seen in a long time.

I know the phrase “content marketing” achieved empty buzzword status long, long ago, but a definition is still in order, if only to highlight how brilliant this menu was. Built Visible describes content marketing as “all about creating content that is of real value to your potential customers with the underlying intention of motivating them to take a particular action.” I think of it as creating something (it doesn’t have to be digital, as my example shows!) that has its own intrinsic value and as a side effect convinces you to engage with a company. In this case, the content was an infographic that recommended beer and food pairings.

This was genuinely useful information—so much so that I snapped a picture of it. The underlying purpose of the insert was to convince me to spend money on not only food, but also a complimentary beer (which I did), but the menu’s method of persuasion was valuable in and of itself. Now I have the name, logo, and social media information of this restaurant willfully saved on my phone. I don’t mind that, at the end of the day, the image is an advertisement. In my mind, it’s a useful guide that I can refer back to in the future—and each time I do, I’ll associate the logo at the periphery of screen with feelings of culinary excitement as I contemplate new food/beer pairings. Well done, Rock Bottom.